The New York attorney general imposed legal actions against President Trump's charitable foundation along with its directors namely, Donald Trump himself, his sons Eric and Donald Jr. and his daughter Ivanka, on Thursday. They were accused of violating campaign finance laws and state and federal charities laws with self-dealing transactions and illegal political coordination for the presidential campaign. A lawsuit was filed against them.
The lawsuit was filed by Attorney General Barbara Underwood in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, with claims of continuous unlawful conducts by Trump foundation. While defining the lawsuit, Underwood said: "As our investigation reveals, the Trump Foundation was little more than a checkbook for payments from Mr. Trump or his business to nonprofits, regardless of their purpose or legality."
According to New York Times, the lawsuit seeks to dissolve the New York-based not-for-profit Trump Foundation and to ban the President from serving as a director for at least 10 years and the remaining board members Donald Jr., Eric Trump, Ivanka from serving the foundation for one year, or until they receive fiduciary training.
The lawsuit has been claimed to be the step ahead of a two-year long investigation which has brought many pieces of evidence of Trump foundation's suspicious transactions to settle a number of legal claims raised against Trump's various business units, as stated by CNN.
Underwood identified at least five instances where Trump Foundation utilized tax-deductible donations to benefit President Trump's business interest and simultaneously added that Trump Foundation was involved in "repeated and willful self-dealing transactions to benefit Mr. Trump's personal and business interests."
These include a payment of $100,000, with the guidelines by Trump to withdraw from the charitable fund of the foundation, to settle legal claims against his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. The instances also include a payment of $158000 to settle legal claims against his Trump National Golf Club for an alleged conspiracy in a hole-in-one tournament held in 2008, and another $10,000 payment at a charity auction to purchase a painting of Trump that was displayed at the Trump National Doral in Miami. The lawsuit contains a few more instances of misconduct of charity laws and self-dealing transactions beneficial to Trump's own business priorities.
The attorney general's office demanded Trump Foundation to pay $2.8 million in restitution, the sum which was raised for the foundation at a 2016 Iowa political fund-raiser. However, Trump quickly responded to this acquisition with his sharp remarks on this.
The sleazy New York Democrats, and their now disgraced (and run out of town) A.G. Eric Schneiderman, are doing everything they can to sue me on a foundation that took in $18,800,000 and gave out to charity more money than it took in, $19,200,000. I won’t settle this case!... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 14, 2018
The latest update on the lawsuit is that Donald Jr.denied all the claims of misconduct and addressed the lawsuit by adding: "more nonsense."
